What a delicious, chewy little morsel this is from playwright Bryony Lavery and director Catrina Lear. Originally produced as part of the National's Connections season of plays written to be performed by young people, this first professional production takes us inside the tomb of China's first emperor, who owns everything including the sun. Determined to be remembered, he orders the construction of a dazzling sepulchre, a work of art complete with a ceiling of jewelled stars, quicksilver rivers and a floor that is a map of his world. When the emperor dies, his concubines are immured alive in the mausoleum with him. Used only to dining royally, the starving women soon come up with an ingenious way of staying alive.

Beautifully designed and performed, Lear's artful production brings out the decorous teasing wit of a script that is both a meditation on different kinds of meat, a celebration of sisterhood and an examination of how art is valued in a dominant male culture. There is an exquisite moment when the women, who initially all look exactly the same, throw off their foot-bindings and outer garments and start to create their own empire of the imagination. "For the first time in my life, it is my life," cries one.

Lavery doesn't shirk the horror of what the women do, the difficulties of sisterhood or the knottiness of the dilemmas faced as the central character, called More Light, has to decide whether to seek the Emperor's sun or stay within the glow of the world created by the women for themselves. In clumsy hands, a play this delicate might turn to dust like the paper birds the women make, but Lear's production lets it fly.